Mental health services endangered

This week’s announcement of the state’s closure of the Hudson River Psychiatric Center (HRPC) and accompanying community residences is a step in the wrong direction. At a time when Dutchess County is already facing a record number of housing-out of mental health patients to other counties (87 in March), we will now be doubling this number due to HRPC’s October closure. This is a tremendous disservice to our neighbors and family members who struggle with mental illness. The distance will hamper treatment by disconnecting families from treatment and stress discharge planning, thereby jeopardizing recovery. Our governor — and particularly the state Legislature, which alone has constitutional authority to determine legislative policy for care and treatment of the mentally ill — have taken a gigantic step backward.The localized preventative and treatment services offered at HRPC have kept an at-risk population out of jail. When the 75 or so severely and persistently mentally ill who are forced into the community without the requisite daily skills or those similar in number currently housed in community residences are pushed into apartments unready and without the supports they need, the county will pay. As we know from the past when HRPC was downsized (and with the closure of Harlem Valley Psychiatric Hospital), although the state expenditures decreased, the county cost rose due to increased law enforcement and jail expenses for untreated patients. Today somewhere between 20 to 40 percent of the current jail population are those with mental health symptoms. While legitimate lawbreakers should be punished, we must also not create the perfect storm that uses the incarceration of the mentally ill as a socially acceptable means of otherwise frowned-upon institutionalization.Let’s be clear, the mentally ill are not criminals. But when the system fails them and they cannot get the treatment they need, they will find that help in our prisons and jails. In addition to the HRPC closure, the state budget also idiotically reduces the scope of county mental hygiene departments to mere consultant roles. It does so at a time when the diaspora of patients into the community will most need county leadership to preserve an integrity of care while also keeping the county cost down. The state Legislature’s recent decision to shift public health management decision-making for community well-being away from counties and give it instead to profit-driven, privatized behavioral health organizations (BHOs) was a mistake, particularly at this time. I lobbied against this in Albany in February. Our state local delegation should seek to repeal this change without delay.In Dutchess County we need to be proactive. First, we need to find ways to help our neighbors and family members who struggle with mental illness to stay well and receive services close to home. And second we need to keep our taxes from rising following this insane and inhuman policy shift coming from Albany that pretends to be cutting state spending when in fact it merely shifts the expenses to the county via public safety costs while our citizenry suffers with loss of services and increased crime. Michael Kelsey represents Amenia, Washington, Pleasant Valley, Stanford and Millbrook in the County Legislature. Write him at KelseyESQ@yahoo.com.